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On August 15, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued an opinion, on remand from the U.S. Supreme Court, ruling that a consumer plaintiff could proceed with his Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) claims because he had sufficiently alleged a “concrete” injury and therefore had standing to sue under Article III of the Constitution. Robins v. Spokeo, Inc., No. 11-56843, 2017 WL 3480695 (9th Cir. Aug. 15, 2017). By way of background, the plaintiff had alleged that the defendant consumer reporting agency “willfully violated various procedural requirements under FCRA,” and consequently published an inaccurate consumer report on its website that “falsely stated his age, marital status, wealth, education level, and profession” and “included a photo of a different person.” In May 2016, the Supreme Court vacated an earlier Ninth Circuit decision, finding that the court failed to consider an essential element of Article III standing: whether the plaintiff alleged a “concrete” injury. (See previous Special Alert here.) After providing some guidance—including that the plaintiff’s injury must be “real” and not “abstract” or merely “procedural”—the high court remanded to the Ninth Circuit for further consideration.

On remand, the court first asked “whether the statutory provisions at issue were established to protect [the plaintiff’s] concrete interests (as opposed to purely procedural rights).” The court answered affirmatively, finding that “the FCRA procedures at issue in this case were crafted to protect consumers’ . . . concrete interest in accurate credit reporting about themselves.” Next, the court asked “whether the specific procedural violations alleged in this case actually harm, or present a material risk of harm to, such interests.” The court again answered affirmatively, finding that the plaintiff sufficiently alleged that he suffered a “real harm” to his “concrete interests in truthful credit reporting.” That is, the plaintiff sufficiently alleged that the defendant “prepared . . . an [inaccurate] report,” “that it then published the report on the Internet,” and that “the nature of the specific alleged reporting inaccuracies” was not “trivial or meaningless,” but instead covered “a broad range of material facts” about the plaintiff’s life “that may be important to employers or others making use of a consumer report.” Finally, the court found that the plaintiff’s allegations were not too speculative, because “both the challenged conduct and the attendant injury have already occurred.” After reaffirming that the plaintiff had adequately alleged the other essential elements of standing, the court remanded to the Central District of California for further proceedings.

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